Thank you for your interest and concern. If what
follows is hard to read, perhaps you will sense how hard it
has been to write.

My own nightmare and fight for justice began 14 years
ago when I woke up in excruciating pain from what a
gynecologic surgeon had told me would be a minor 20-minute
operation to repair an asymptomatic and possibly non-existent
hernia. He had performed instead a two-hour
operation I never consented to and never would have consented
to. I screamed in shock, horror, and disbelief
when I saw what he had done to me. He had cut out my
introitus and a lengthwise wedge section of my posterior
vaginal wall and perineal floor, then sewed me completely
shut from my coccyx to my pubic bone. Until I found the
doctor who opened my vagina a year later, I could not
discharge my menstrual flow, have intercourse, or feel
comfortable anywhere except in a bathtub of hot water.

The several other doctors who examined me told me my
problems were in my head. They falsified my medical records,
told me I needed counseling, and refused to treat me. I
realize now that they saw I had been severely mutilated,
recognized obvious medical malpractice, didn't want to be
involved, and put me off until the two-year statute of
limitations had expired.

I finally found a gynecologist who acknowledged that my
vagina was completely closed. He said it was the worst case
of genital mutilation he had ever seen. In another two-hour
operation, he removed massive scar tissue and created a new
vaginal space. But my vulva was still displaced and
disconnected from the base of my vagina. My new vaginal
orifice was just a slit in my perineal skin, above and
behind the arch of my pubic bone. And I was in constant
severe pain.

This doctor referred me to William H. Masters, M.D.,
with whom he had worked at the Masters and Johnson Institute
in St. Louis. I told Dr. Masters that if I pushed my
displaced vulvar tissue back behind my pubic bone and around
my vaginal orifice, I got instant relief and still had about
95 percent of my ability to experience sexual sensation. Dr.
Masters led me to believe that my vulva -- in its entirety --
could be pulled back to its original position around my
vaginal orifice. Both of these doctors told me they had
examined and repaired hundreds of such mutilations. Dr.
Masters said he had seen only three or four as severe as
mine.

Dr. Masters instructed this second surgeon to perform
my third operation. This "repair" made my surgically
displaced vulva appear normal but cut out almost all of my
erogenous tissue, severed my sex nerves, robbed me of 95
percent of my ability to experience sexual sensation, left
me in chronic pain, turned me into someone no one would want
to be, and altered my life and the lives of those closest
and dearest to me forever.

I'd rather have been gang-raped.

I assumed I was the victim of botched surgery. But I
later read in Dr. Masters' records that his specific
written instructions were to separate my minor labia
from
my major labia. If he had told me this is what they were
going to do, I would have refused. Dr. Masters knew the
condition this operation would leave me in. He knew I
would never have consented. And he didn't tell me.

I've seen almost 20 other doctors since then in my
desperation to get help. But I never got help. One doctor, a
plastic surgeon, rammed his finger in and out of me and
said, "A penis will fit." Another, who described my closed
vagina and displaced reconfigured vulva as "grossly
anatomically normal," jabbed me in the clitoris and said,
"Live with it!"

A psychiatrist I saw said, "First, I want to apologize
for all that these medical doctors have done to you. I find
this absolutely horrifying. Don't ever let anyone convince
you that you have psychiatric problems, because you don't. I
compare your trauma to that of a rape victim."

A psychologist who specializes in sexual trauma told
me, "You've been sexually abused. It just happens to have
been done by doctors."

In early July 1994, 13 years after our first meeting,
Dr. Masters contacted me to arrange a meeting to discuss my
complaints against him. I agreed but told him clearly that
it would be just to talk and that I did not want him to
examine me again. My husband and I met with Dr. Masters on
July 19, 1994. During that meeting, which I audiotaped (with
his permission), Dr. Masters told me he would need "three to
four days" to examine me "to check for variance in the
surgical result from day to day," even though I had told him
I did not want him to examine me again. The Missouri State
Board of Registration for the Healing Arts encouraged me --
illegally -- to submit to the four-day pelvic examination
Dr. Masters illegally proposed -- illegally because
every
member of the Board was aware that the eminent William H.
Masters, M.D., of the world-famous Masters and Johnson
Institute in St. Louis, had not been licensed to
practice
medicine in Missouri since January 31, 1994. (His
institute closed December 16, 1994.)

This is typical of the way I've been treated during my
four-year run-around with the Missouri State Board of
Registration for the Healing Arts, whose "mission is to
protect the rights of the citizens of the state." The
details of my ongoing ordeal with that organization will be
thoroughly documented, along with the rest of my story, at a
later date.

During these past 14 years, I've talked with numerous
other women with stories similar to mine. I realize now that
there are thousands -- perhaps even millions -- of women
in this country who have been mutilated by their doctors.
One nurse told me, "They do this to women all the time; they
just don't tell them about it." One woman told me that she
has had 18 operations in an unsuccessful attempt to repair
her original surgery. One woman's stitches keep falling
apart. One has to stand to urinate. Another has to wear
diapers. Another can't keep her feces out of her vagina.
Doctors performing "repair" operations on several of one
surgeon's victims have found hearts and his initials carved
on their insides.

Many of these women now live as virtual recluses. I've
wondered how many have committed suicide.

I want this surgical destruction of genitals and
lives to stop. I cannot live -- I cannot die in peace --
knowing that there are doctors who are doing to others what
they did to me and are getting away with it -- without doing
everything I can to stop them.

I founded Patients In ARMS to provide emotional support
for victims of this deliberate, premeditated, intentional
surgical mutilation of patients by their doctors; to
document the physical and psychological damage and suffering
it causes; to expose the greed, power lust, contempt,
arrogance, indifference, hatred of women and pathological
compulsion of the doctors who do it; to expose the
collusion/conspiracy between state medical boards and
doctors that covers it up and helps perpetuate it; to force
state medical boards to do their job by immediately
investigating complaints about it and taking swift, firm
action against it; to forewarn and forearm the general
public by making them aware of it; to help enact laws
against it; to see that those laws are vigorously enforced
to prevent it; and to severely punish doctors who continue
to do it.

I spoke at the Third International Symposium on
Circumcision about my experience and was shocked and
sickened as I became aware, during the Symposium, of the
parallels between what was done to me and what I had been
brainwashed and pressured, against all my maternal instincts
and common sense, into letting still another genital
mutilator do to my own baby son.

I want to know why doctors mutilate women. I want to
know why they mutilate male babies. I want to know what
compels mutilators to mutilate. It's not just money.

I want to know if the percentage of doctors who cut
genitals is higher among doctors whose own genitals have
been cut. Is male infant circumcision at the bottom of
all this cutting?IS IT?

I would especially like to contact other women who have
been patients of Dr. Masters, and women who have consulted
him about surgical "repair."

These atrocities must stop. I welcome calls, correspondence,
questions, comments and suggestions from anyone
who has been the victim of obstetrical or gynecological
mutilation or any other kind of mutilation, malpractice,
conspiracy or fraud -- including the amputation and
trafficking of the foreskins of human male babies.